Here you go, then. The beginning of Ms. Trump’s speech from last night, and Ms. Obama’s speech from 8 years ago. The repeated parts are the beginning and end of a nice paragraph, in Ms. Trump’s first page, Ms. Obama’s 2nd page (3.5 vs 6 pages, total). I note that Ms. Trump describes what her parents taught her, without reference to her spouse, while Ms. Obama describes something she and her spouse have in common. There’s also a desirable sentence in Ms. Obama’s original which Ms. Trump, significantly, does not claim. Giving credit to people you don’t know or don’t agree with isn’t really Mr. Trump’s “thing”. Ms. Trump might claim it for her parents or herself, but bringing it up in the context of her husband doesn’t do him any favors.

I’ve included Ms. Trump’s 2nd page because I found the her remark about Mr. Trump’s loyalty rather, uh, unexpected. With all due respect, nobody’s 3rd spouse, after 2 divorces, can really attest to someone else’s “loyalty”. IMHO.

Both speeches are worth reading, what you get here is the context for the sound bytes that are easy to find tonight. Go watch or listen to the complete works, they’re worth your time.

Ms Trump: Thank you very much. Thank you. You have all been very kind to Donald and me, to our young son Barron, and to our whole family. It’s a very nice welcome and we’re excited to be with you at this historic convention. I am so proud of your choice for President of the United States, my husband, Donald J. Trump. And I can assure you, he is moved by this great honor. The 2016 Republican primaries were fierce and started with many candidates, 17 to be exact, and I know that Donald agrees with me when I mention how talented all of them are. They deserve respect and gratitude from all of us. However, when it comes to my husband, I will say that I am definitely biased, and for good reason. I have been with Donald for 18 years and I have been aware of his love for this country since we first met. He never had a hidden agenda when it comes to his patriotism, because, like me, he loves this country so much. I was born in Slovenia, a small, beautiful and then communist country in Central Europe. My sister Ines, who is an incredible woman and a friend, and I were raised by my wonderful parents. My elegant and hard-working mother Amalia introduced me to fashion and beauty. My father Viktor instilled in me a passion for business and travel. Their integrity, compassion and intelligence reflect to this day on me and for my love of family and America. From a young age, my parents impressed on me the

values that you work hard for what you want in life: that your word is your bond and you do what you say and keep your promise; that you treat people with respect. They taught and showed me values and morals in their daily life. That is a lesson that I continue to pass along to our son, and we need to pass those lessons on to the many generation to follow. Because we want our children — and all children in this nation — to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them. (Ms Trump repeated this about here. It’s not in the transcript.)

I travelled the world while working hard in the incredible arena of fashion. After living and working in Milan and Paris, I arrived in New York City twenty years ago, and I saw both the joys and the hardships of daily life. On July 28th, 2006, I was very proud to become a citizen of the United States — the greatest privilege on planet Earth. I cannot, or will not take the freedoms this country offers for granted. But these freedoms have come with a price so many times. The sacrifices made by our veterans are reminders to us of this. I would like to take this moment to recognize an amazing veteran, the great Senator Bob Dole. And let us thank all of our veterans in the arena today, and those across our great country. We are all truly blessed to be here. That will never change.

I can tell you with certainty that my husband has been concerned about our country for as long as I have known him. With all of my heart, I know that he will make a great and lasting difference. Donald has a deep and unbounding determination and a never-give-up attitude. I have seen him fight for years to get a project done — or even started — and he does not give up! If you want someone to fight for you and your country, I can assure you, he is the ‘guy’. He will never, ever, give up. And, most importantly, he will never, ever, let you down. Donald is, and always has been, an amazing leader. Now, he will go to work for you. His achievements speak for themselves, and his performance throughout the primary campaign proved that he knows how to win. He also knows how to remain focused on improving our country — on keeping it safe and secure. He is tough when he has to be but he is also kind and fair and caring. This kindness is not always noted, but it is there for all to see. That is one reason I fell in love with him to begin with. Donald is intensely loyal. To family, friends, employees, country. (A 3rd wife would know…) He has the utmost respect for his parents, Mary and Fred, to his sisters Maryanne and Elizabeth, to his brother Robert and to the memory of his late brother Fred. His children have been cared for and mentored to the extent that even his adversaries admit they are an amazing testament to who he is as a man and a father. [snip]

Ms Obama: As you might imagine, for Barack, running for president is nothing compared to that first game of basketball with my brother, Craig. I can’t tell you how much it means to have Craig and my mom here tonight. Like Craig, I can feel my dad looking down on us, just as I’ve felt his presence in every grace-filled moment of my life.

At 6-foot-6, I’ve often felt like Craig was looking down on me too … literally. But the truth is, both when we were kids and today, he wasn’t looking down on me. He was watching over me. And he’s been there for me every step of the way since that clear February day 19 months ago, when — with little more than our faith in each other and a hunger for change — we joined my husband, Barack Obama, on the improbable journey that’s brought us to this moment. But each of us also comes here tonight by way of our own improbable journey.

I come here tonight as a sister, blessed with a brother who is my mentor, my protector and my lifelong friend. I come here as a wife who loves my husband and believes he will be an extraordinary president. I come here as a mom whose girls are the heart of my heart and the center of my world — they’re the first thing I think about when I wake up in the morning, and the last thing I think about when I go to bed at night. Their future — and all our children’s future — is my stake in this election. And I come here as a daughter — raised on the South Side of Chicago by a father who was a blue-collar city worker and a mother who stayed at home with my brother and me. My mother’s love has always been a sustaining force for our family, and one of my greatest joys is seeing her integrity, her compassion and her intelligence reflected in my own daughters.

My dad was our rock. Although he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in his early 30s, he was our provider, our champion, our hero. As he got sicker, it got harder for him to walk, it took him longer to get dressed in the morning. But if he was in pain, he never let on.

He never stopped smiling and laughing — even while struggling to button his shirt, even while using two canes to get himself across the room to give my mom a kiss. He just woke up a little earlier and worked a little harder.

He and my mom poured everything they had into me and Craig. It was the greatest gift a child can receive: never doubting for a single minute that you’re loved, and cherished, and have a place in this world. And thanks to their faith and hard work, we both were able to go on to college. So I know firsthand from their lives — and mine — that the American dream endures.

And you know, what struck me when I first met Barack was that even though he had this funny name, even though he’d grown up all the way across the continent in Hawaii, his family was so much like mine. He was raised by grandparents who were working-class folks just like my parents, and by a single mother who struggled to pay the bills just like we did. Like my family, they scrimped and saved so that he could have opportunities they never had themselves. And Barack and I were raised with so many of the same

values: that you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say you’re going to do; that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them, and even if you don’t agree with them.

And Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values, and pass them on to the next generation. Because we want our children — and all children in this nation — to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.

And as our friendship grew, and I learned more about Barack, he introduced me to the work he’d done when he first moved to Chicago after college. Instead of heading to Wall Street, Barack had gone to work in neighborhoods devastated when steel plants shut down and jobs dried up. And he’d been invited back to speak to people from those neighborhoods about how to rebuild their community.
The people gathered together that day were ordinary folks doing the best they could to build a good life. They were parents living paycheck to paycheck; grandparents trying to get by on a fixed income; men frustrated that they couldn’t support their families after their jobs disappeared. Those folks weren’t asking for a handout or a shortcut. They were ready to work — they wanted to contribute. They believed — like you and I believe — that America should be a place where you can make it if you try.

Barack stood up that day, and spoke words that have stayed with me ever since. He talked about “The world as it is” and “The world as it should be.” And he said that all too often, we accept the distance between the two, and settle for the world as it is — even when it doesn’t reflect our values and aspirations. But he reminded us that we know what our world should look like. We know what fairness and justice and opportunity look like. And he urged us to believe in ourselves — to find the strength within ourselves to strive for the world as it should be. And isn’t that the great American story?

It’s the story of men and women gathered in churches and union halls, in town squares and high school gyms — people who stood up and marched and risked everything they had — refusing to settle, determined to mold our future into the shape of our ideals. [snip]

Russell Bulgin was a terrific automotive writer who also covered bicycles beautifully. A graceful and wide ranging writer, he died at a very young age, in 2002. If you’ve never read his stuff, search it out. I found out about him when his work started appearing in Autoweek, but he’d been in CAR and other publications years before that.

A sad loss, but someone I was glad to have shared the planet with.

You could do worse than starting with Mr. Green’s write up, but do search out Bulgin’s cycling work too!

Hypervisor technologies, such as VMware, Hyper-V, KVM, etc. ‘Hypervisor’ suggests the next logical level above a supervisor, but in usage it means a Virtual Machine Monitor. A Hypervisor can be an application running on a shrink-wrapped, commercial OS, or it could be VMware’s (and perhaps others’) Linux-derrived OSs that are built to host VMs and very little else.

Virtual switch configuration Preferred: learn this…

Networking Concepts & Protocols (Ethernet: Multi-host wire or series of wires with collision detection and retry after random delay. Good for packet oriented data.) (IPv4 “Internet Protocol version 4, 32 bit address space in common use on for TCP/IP. Addresses are given in the form 0 0 0 0 to 256 256 256 256. (IPv6 is larger addresses, 64 bits.

The Airfix instructions provide only Humbrol paint numbers for suggested colors. So I looked up the names and made a table of paints called out in the instructions, indexed by instruction page, construction step and color number. Its below, along with part numbers of what’s painted.

I’ve added some areas *to* color (ejection seat head box, breaking the seat cushion down into three different areas of color, for example) that seem non-controversial. They’re marked by a “- wba”. Airfix is not responsible for my contributions but I felt it was unfriendly to say nothing.

I don’t typically use Humbrol colors, so my next step will be cross-reference to the Polly Scale & Testors Model Master Acryl (II) acrylic colors. And Tamiya and Gunze Sangyo acrylics when they’re the better match.
Then I’ll add my own interpretation what additional areas should get attention. For example, ’24; Trainer Yellow;’ is called out for the parachute webbing/harness on the ejection seat head box. The actual color is a warm golden brown with a slightly metallic sheen- “Bronze” is one description. “Golden brown Martin Baker parachute webbing” would be my choice to name it.

Matt Black and Satin White are far to stark, in my opinion, so something lighter, and distinct, for black plastic, black painted metal, and tires, will be required, as will something duller for landing gear parts and bays, and the engine intake ducting. Stay tuned!

Quiz questions about software test. My answers are probably longer than was hoped for, but specific, and most important, true and demonstrable.

1) What is the difference between functional testing and system testing?

2) What are the different testing methodologies?

1) System test is the equivalent of actual customers/users using the product. Carried out as if in the real world, with a range of detailed configurations, simulation of typical users working in typical way. It is one level of abstraction above Functional testing. Functional Test verifies that the product will do functions which it is intended to do. Play, rewind, stop, pause, fast forward. +, -, x, /, =. Functional Tests must be drawn from the Requirements documents. System Test checks that a product which meets those requirements can be operated in the real world to solve real problems. Put another way, System test proves that the requirements selected for the product are correct.

This makes one wonder why engineers don’t do system test on the requirements before creating the design and code… mostly because its hard to do, and they’re sure they understand what the requirements should be, I suppose. I’ve never seen it done in depth.

2) “the different testing methodologies” seems over-determined. The following are ‘some’ different testing methods. There may be others.

Perhaps the intent of the question is to expose a world divided into White Boxand Black Box testing, which are different from each other. But there are other dichotomies, in addition to White Box and Black Box.

Software testing methods divide into two large classes, Staticand Dynamic. Static testing looks at source code, dynamic testing requires executable programs and runs them. Another division is between Using a Tool that evaluates source code and and Checking ProgramOutput. Within either set of large groups are smaller divisions, Black Box and White Box (and Clear Box and Gray Box) are all divisions of Dynamic or Checking Output methods. Specific methods within the large groups include

running source code through a compiler

running a stress test that consumes all of a given resource on the host

running a tool that looks for memory allocation and access errors

doing a clean install on a customer-like system and then running customer-like activities and checking their output for correctness.

Orthagonal to all of the above, Manual Test and Automated Test are infastructure-based distinctions, Automated tests may be Black Box, Unit, running a tool, checking output, or any other methodology. Manual and Automated are meta-methods.

Static Software Test Methods: Similar to, but not exactly the same as Tool Using Methods, to find problems in software source code.

2.1) Compile successfully, no errors or warnings. This is the first step before inspection, since nothing is better or cheaper at finding compiler problems than the compiler.

2.2) Inspection and code review, to see if the code is written to the standards that the organization enforces. I like and use code reviews, the formal Fagan system, and less formal “extreme programming” techniques like having a second person review all diffs or do a walk through with two people at the workstation. They work. The standards inspected for are usually helpful in preventing bugs or making them visible. Just looking usually improves product quality – the Western Electric effect if nothing else.

There may be some insight into product requirements and how the code meets them in a review. But the reviewers would need to know the requirements and the design of the software in some detail. Its difficult enough to get the code itself to be read. In Engineering Paradise, I suppose the requirements are formally linked to design features, and features to data and code that operates on that data, to create the feature.

2.3) Static analysis. Besides passing compiler checks without errors or warnings, there are static analysis tools, “lint” for example, that can inspect code for consistency with best practices and deterministic operation. Coverity, and others, have commercial products that do static test on source code.

2.4) Linking, loading. The final static events are linking the code and libraries required to complete the application, and writing a usable file for the executable, which the loader will load.

Dynamic Software Test Methods:

2.5) Memory access / leakage software test. Rational/IBM’s Purify, like ValGrind and BoundsChecker, run an instrumented copy of the source code under test to see memory problems in a dynamic environment. Its run and the results should be checked and responded to before a large investment in further Dynamic testing should happen.

2.6) Performance test. Measuring resources consumed, obviously time, possibly others, during repeatable, usually large-scale, operations, similar to System or Load tests. Generic data, from development testing, is necessary and may be shipped as an installation test to users. Proprietary data, under a NDA (non-disclosure agreement), may also be needed, for complex problems ans/or important customers. In normal operation, the actual outputs are not looked at, at most, spot-checked, and the tool(s) keeping track of resources are the basis of pass/fail.

2.7) Installation Test. Typically a subset of in-house performance tests, with optional, generic, data. The performance recorded is comparable between releases, instances, configurations, sites, customers, and the software maker’s own in-house performance tests. Customers can use Installation tests to verify their hardware/software environment, benchmark it, evaluate new purchases for their environment, etc.

Checking ProgramOutput Methods:

After tool based dynamic testing, the rest of Dynamic software test is based on running the product with specific inputs and checking the outputs, in detail.

Checking can be done with with exit status, stack traces,”assert()”, exceptions, diffing large output files against ‘gold’ references, log searches, directory listings, searching for keywords in output streams indicating failure or incorrect operation, checking for expected output and no other, etc. No test failures are acceptable. Each test must be deterministic, sequence independant, and (ideally) can run automatically. No judgement required for results. All require running the program.

2.8) Unit tests of pieces of the a product, in isolation, with fake/simulated/mock resources. A great bottom-up tool for verifying software. At the unit test level is where knowledge of the code is most important to testing. It is white box/clear box, with full insight into the code under test. One explicit goal of unit test should be forcing all branches in the code to be executed. That can’t be done without allowing visibility into the code.

2.9) Integration Test. The next level above unit test, the tests of code which calls code which calls code… and the code above that! The point is that integration is where code from different groups, different companies, different points in time, certainly different engineers, comes together. Misunderstanding is always possible. Here’s one place it shows up. Visibility into the code is getting dimmer here. Some tests are more functional, if a subsystem contains complete, requirement-satisfying functions.

2.10) Functional Test. Verifying that the product will do functions which it is intended to do. Play, rewind, stop, pause, fast forward. +, -, x, /, =. Tests here should be drawn from the Requirements documents. Things that should be tested here should start in the Requirements docs. Each requirement has to be demonstrated to have been met. Its black-box testing, run from the interface customers use, on a representative host, with no insight into the internals of the product. Unless the requirements specify low level actions.

Its not particularly combinatorial- a short program, a long program, 2+2, 1/-37. Pat head. Rub belly. Walk, Not all 3 at once.

If a word-processor has no stated limit for document size, you need to load or make a really big file, but, truly, that’s a bad spec. A practical limit of ‘n’ characters has to be agreed as the maximum size tested-to. Then you stop.

All these Tests should be drawn from the Requirements documents. Things that should be tested here should start in the Requirements docs.

All that Verification is good, but what about Validation?

Unit test, Integration test, or Functional Test, is where Validation, proving correctness of the design, might happen. Validation test is where deep algorithms are fully exercised, broad ranges of input are fully exercised, Tests that include all possible numerals, all possible characters, all defined whitespace, read in or written out. Numbers from MinInt to MaxInt, 0 to MaxUnsigned, the full range of Unicode characters, etc., etc., are exercised.

(Errors in input numbers should be seen in System test anyway, but accepting a wide range goes here.) This is not always done very formally, because most modern code environments don’t need it. But someone ought to look at least once.

L10n (Localization) and I18n (Internationalization) that need to be selected at link time or run time can be checked here too.This is also where path-length limits, IPv-6 addresses, etc. should be checked.

2.11) User interface test verifies the controls and indicators that users at various levels see, hear, touch, operate and respond to. This is separate from any actual work the program may do in response. This is a high-value target for automation, since it can be complex and tedious to do UI testing in great detail by hand.

2.12) System Test. Full up use of the system. Training, white-paper and demo/marketing examples. Real-world situations reproduced from bugs or solutions provided for customers. Unless requirements included complexity, this is where the complex tests start. Huge data. Complex operations. The range of supported host configurations, min to max, gets tested here too.

We’ll want to see all the error messages, created every possible way. We’ll want to have canned setups on file, just like a customer would, and we pour them into the product, run it, and collect the output. The set pass/fail on the output.

Somewhere between System Test and Acceptance test, the scale of pass/fail goes up another level of abstraction. Software test pass/fail results are one in the same with the product pass / fail. If data and setup are good, it should run and pass. Ship the result. If the data and/or setup have a problem, it should run and fail. The failure should propagate out to be stored in detail, but in the end this is a trinary result. Pass, Fail, Not Proven

2.13) Load test, Stress test. Load tests go to the point that all of a resource is consumed, and adding more activity produces no more output in real time. Resources include CPU, memory, local storage, networked storage, video memory, USB ports, maximum number of users, maximum number of jobs, maximum instances of product, etc. Stress test adds data, jobs, etc, clearly (110% or more) above load test maximum.

2.14) Stability test. Long term test. Stability test and long-term test are where a server or set of servers are started and left running, doing real work, for days, weeks, months. Some of the tests must repeat inputs and expect identical outputs each time. Resource consumption should be checked. Its fair for the application or tool to have the node to itself, but adding other applications and unrelated users here and in the Load/Stress tests is meaningful, to avoid surprises from the field.

2.15) Acceptance test. Customer sets-up their run-time world use of the system and uses it. Everything they would normally do. If its a repeat sale, they may just clone the previous installation. Run the previous and the new system, release, patch, etc, and compare output to installed software on machines that customer likes and trusts. If the product is a new one, acceptance means judging pass-fail from the output produced.

Many other kinds of test are mentioned in conversation and literature. A web search will turn up dozens. Regression test, stability test, in the sense that a new code branch is stable, sanity test and smoke test are all forms of testing but usually, in my experience, consist of subsets of the test levels/methods listed above.

A Smoke test (run the product, make sure it loads and runs, like a hardware smoke test where you apply power, turn it on and see if any smoke comes out…) can be made from the first steps of several different methods/levels named above. If the Smoke test is more than simply running the program once, then it should probably be some part of one of the other methods/levels. Or to put it another way, the work that goes into setting up the smoke test should be shared/captured. There might be a ..test/smoke/… directory, but the contents should be copied from somewhere else.

A Sanity test, a Stability test and Regression tests are successively larger swaths, at lower and lower levels, of the System, Performance, User Interface, Functional, etc. tests. They should be specified and are not embarrassing, but their content should be drawn from or reflected by those larger level-based tests. The should not be original and alone.

Ziv, the questioner asks: ” … how would one proceed if he wants to learn QA?

More specifically, a programmer who wants to learn about the QA process and how to manage a good QA methodology. I was given the role of jumpstarting a QA process in our company and I’m a bit lost, what are the different types of testing (system, integration, white box, black box) and which are most important to implement first? How would one implement them?“

I wrote:

There are simple rules of thumb.

Try what the manual says. Install and run on a clean target, user license, the works. Does it work? Did you have to add anything not covered in the manual?

Are all the default control values usable? Or is there something that’s wrong, or blank, by default and always has to be changed?

Set every value in the user interface to something other than its default. Can you detect a difference caused by the change? Is it correct? Do them one at a time, or in the smallest sets possible, to make the results clear.

Set every value in the user interface to a second, non-default, value. Change everything at once. Can you detect the difference? Is it correct?

One by one, do something to cause every error message to be generated. Do something similar, but correctly, so that no error message is generated.

All of the above depend on changing a condition, between an “A” case and a “B” case, and that change having a detectable result. Then the “C” case produces another change, another result, and so forth. For 10 tests, you need 11 conditions. Using defaults as much as possible is a good first condition.

By now you’ve got a list of things to test, that you recorded, and results, that you recorded, and maybe some new bugs. Throw something big and complicated at the solution. Give it a file of 173000 words to sort, paste a Jane Austin novel or some telecommunications standard 100 pages long, a 50MB bitmap graphic, 3 hours of streaming video. Open the performance monitor and get CPU-bound, or I/O bound. For an hour. Check memory use: always increasing? Rises and falls?

Take the list of bugs closed in the last week, month, sprint, etc. Check them. All. Are they really fixed?

Keep track of what to do, how it worked on what version/release/build/configuration, open and closed bugs, what controls have been set or changed, what data, test files or examples have been used, etc. is all part of Quality world. Keep results as tables in a spread sheet, make version controlled backups / saves.

Someone writing software, or any one creating anything, has an idea of what they’re trying to make. The quality process starts with expectations. Requirements, specifications, rules, or another articulation of what’s expected. Then there’s the solution, the thing offered to perform, assist, enable or automate what’s expected. Then there are tests, operations, examples, inspections, measurements, questionnaires, etc., to relate one or more particular solution(s) to (relevant) expectations. Finally, there’s an adjustment, compensation, tuning, correction or other positive action that is hoped to affect the solution(s).

When one writes software, one has a goal of it doing something, and to the extent that’s expressed, the behavior can be checked. Hello.exe displays “Hello World” on a screen. “2**150” in the Python interpreter displays, “1427247692705959881058285969449495136382746624L”. Etc. For small problems and small solutions, its possible to exhaustively test for expected results. But you wouldn’t test a word processor just by typing in some words, or even whole documents. There are limits of do-ability and reason. If you did type in all of “Emma” by Jane Austin, would you have to try her other four novels? “Don Quixote” in Spanish?

Hence an emphasis on expectations. Meeting expectations tells you when the solution is complete. My web search for “Learn Quality Assurance” just returned 46 million potential links, so there’s no shortage of opinions. Classic books on the subject (my opinion, worth what you paid for it:) include

“Quality is Free” by Philip Crosby,

“Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” by Robert Pursig

“Managing the Software Process” by Watts Humphrey

“The Mythical Man Month” by Fred Brooks

“Code Complete” by Steve McConnell

Take 5 minutes to read some of the Amazon reviews of those books and you’ll be on your way. Get one or more and read them. They’re not boring. Browse ASQ, Dr. Dobbs, Stack Overflow. Above all, just like writing software. DO it. Consider the quality of some software under your control. Does it meet expectation? If so, firm hand-shake and twinkle in the eye. Excellent!. If not, can it be corrected? Move to the next candidate.

I like the Do-Test-Evaluate-Correct loop, but its not a Universal Truth. Pick a process and follow it consciously. Have people try the testing, verification and validation steps described in the language manual they use most frequently. Its right there on their desk, or in their phone’s browser.

Look at your expectations. Are they captured in a publicly known place? With revision control? Does anyone use them? Is there any point where the solutions being produced are checked against the expectations they are supposed to be meeting?

Look at your past and current bug reports. (You need a bug tracking system. If you don’t have one, start there.) What’s the most common catastrophic bug that stops shipment or requires an immediate patch? Whats the most commonly reported customer bug? What’s the most common bug that doesn’t get fixed?

Take a look at ISO 9000 process rules. Reflect on value to your customers/users. Is there’s a “customer value statement” that explains how some change affects the customer’s perception of the value of the solution? How about in the requirements?

By “the QA process”, you could mean “Quality Assurance”, versus “QC”, “Quality Control”? You might start with the http://www.ASQ.org web site, where the “American Society for Quality” dodges the question by not specifying “Control” (their old name was “ASQC”) or “Assurance”.

Quality; alone, “assured” or “controlled”, is a big idea with multiple, overlapping definitions and usages. Some will tell you it cannot be measured in degrees- its present or not, no “high quality” or “low quality” for them. Another famous claim is that no definition is satisfactory, so its good to talk about it, but avoid being pinned down in a precise definition. How do you feel about it?